Supreme Court examines self; ‘Are we being too liberal with law in granting divorce?’

A bench of Supreme Court has decided to examine whether the top court should grant divorce to couples on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage, without taking into consideration the mandatory 18-month period of separation.

Under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has been exercising its authority to grant divorce to married couples even when the Hindu Marriage Act demands the couple to stay apart for 18 months before separating with mutual consent.

The Article 142 states that the Supreme Court has the power to deliver any order required “for doing complete justice.” The court has used this act as a provision to grant divorce in many cases, dispensing the six-month waiting period after a judicial separation of one year, which makes it 18 months under Section 13B of the Act.

As reported in The Indian Express, the government has informed the top court that there is no proposal in the Article to include irretrievable breakdown of marriage as one of the conditions to grant divorce. However, a bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana has decided to examine whether judges should override the legislative will. As per the report, while negotiating a bunch of petitions wherein couples wanted the waiting period to be dissolved since there was an “irretrievable breakdown of marriage,” Justices Gogoi and Ramana conjectured on whether they should exercise such power against what the Act permits.

They asked Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi for his perspective. AG Rohtagi reportedly stated that the legislature was not considering irretrievable breakdown of marriage as a basis for granting divorce.

Rohatgi said that there have been dissenting views of different benches of the apex court between 1996 and 2010, regarding the dissolution of the six-month notice period. While some judges agreed for the relaxation of six-month notice period, the others said if legislature had a specific provision, couples should be sent to family courts for getting divorce .

According to the report, Rohatgi decided to leave it on the constitution bench to decide whether divorce can, at all, be granted on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of marriage and the waiting period should be done away with.

While the bench is waiting to hear the case in August, NewsGram asked general public for their opinions on the subject.

Himanshu Kumar, a working professional, states, “Irretrievable breakdown will be a too flexible law to grant divorces, because the definition for irretrievable varies from person to person. And even a futile situation could be irretrievable for some people. Like, I once read in news where a woman demanded divorce because her husband used to switch off the fan at night. So, instead of making flexible laws, proper & mature counseling should be provided to the couples.”

While Himanshu seems to be against considering irretrievable breakdown of marriage as a ground for divorce, Tanuj Mitra, a Kolkata resident, is of the opposite views. Tanuj states, “What I feel is that granting divorce on grounds of irretrievable breakdown of marriage should be flexible enough and justice should prevail without the mandatory 18-month separation. The top court should override the legislative will irrespective of government proposals. Since it’s a pro-Hindutva government, it will look to preserve the marriage in the set parameters of the Hindu Marriage Act and might not introduce any such legislature. As per my view, the waiting period should be curtailed and the SC should exercise its power on granting absolute justice. Sending the divorce cases to family courts will only leave the case as well as the panel perplexed as human beings are complex individuals.”

It was attached to a post caption: “Amul Topical: Much awaited Indian cricket captain — Bollywood actress marriage!”

Virat and Anushka’s nuptials were a close family affair in Tuscany, Italy on Monday afternoon. It was a hush-hush affair at a luxury heritage resort Borgo Finocchieto, a little over 100 km away from Florence. (IANS)

Mumbai, December 11,2017: On thespian Dilip Kumar’s 95th birthday, his evergreen wife Saira Banu, 22 years his junior, says her marriage to him has been a “perfect dream”.

Dilip Kumar is recuperating from a bout of pneumonia. On his special day, a stream of visitors began trickling into their bungalow in Bandra here from early Monday morning.

Emotional about the love that her husband continues to receive year after year, the utterly devoted wife said: “Every year, I am asked the same things. What are we doing for Saab’s birthday? For those who don’t know, it is the day when our residence turns into a gorgeous fairyland.

“There are flowers everywhere from everyone who comes to pay Saab a visit on his birthday. It is a day when Saab’s brothers, sisters, relatives and come close friends come together.”

Saira Banu and Dilip Kumar got married in 1966.

“Seriously, there is no woman as blessed as I am… I thank my Allah every day for this. It has been my good fortune to be able to do anything for the man I love intensely. For me, it was always Saab, no one else. I was his fan from the time I can remember. While still a teenager, I wanted to be his wife.

“I am very headstrong and once I made up my mind, there was no stopping me. I knew many beautiful women wanted to marry Saab, but he chose me. It was my dream come true and that’s what my marriage has been, a perfect dream.”

Now she is devoted to taking care of her ailing husband.

“Looking after Saab, his life and his home comes naturally to me. All Indian wives look after their husbands. In my family, I’ve seen women being devoted to their husbands. I grew up watching that.”(IANS)

Bride Sale: Story of transformation of Indian Bride into Slave Bride

–Samridhi Nain

Bride Sale in India seems to be trending in Haryana, a state with the lowest sex ratio, even marriage continues to be a way of exploitation as Indian brides for marriage are purchased at cattle rate and trafficked into the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab.

These ‘brides’ are imported from poverty-stricken states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Orrisa, West Bengal & Assam, where the traffickers either take advantage of the family’s poverty or abduct the young girls varying anywhere between the ages of 15 and 30, according to 2013 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The bride sale practice has been completely normal in the northern states due to the acute shortage of girls because of practices like sex selection and female foeticide. But if the reports are to be believed then even if not a single case of female foeticide takes place in Haryana, it would still take 50 years to get the numbers back to normal from India’s sex ratio today. However, the problem remains as locals & Khap leaders keep refusing to accept the facts at hand. Some believe it is the education of women that is the root problem because they want to marry a man who is also well-educated, whereas some believe that there has always been a shortage of girls but before where one woman would take care of five brothers, now, it requires five separate women to do the same.

As Haryana keeps preferring the male child and that male child grows up to prefer a bride, the best solution available at hand remains of these women who are bought at a price varying on their age, beauty & virginity and once bought, they are turned into a slave bride. Once married, these women can be resold as they are not viewed as a respected member but a commodity as they are not considered to be entitled to any inheritance by the family.

Stencil of Missing Girls Project, Wikimedia Commons

A field study, covering 92 villages of Mahendragarh, Sirsa, Karnal, Sonipat & Mewat districts had been conducted on the impact of the sex ratio on marriage which covered over 10,000 households and found that 9,000 married women were bought from other states. The study was conducted by NGO Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra but the families kept denying of any exchange of money for the bride.

In 2016, the ministry of women and child development came up with India’s first comprehensive anti-trafficking laws under ‘Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection & Rehabilitation) Bill, 2016 but the bill faces many challenges and is believed to not achieve its objectives of preventing trafficking & providing protection & rehabilitation to trafficked victims. Activists also believe that the bill will be able to do very little to stop the bride sale.

With such haunting demographics at hand, the hope still remains that sooner or later, the government might realize the need for stringent implementation of the rules & regulations to stop the violation of these young women at the hands of sex traffickers and quell this ‘Buy A Bride’ policy.

-Samridhi is a student of Philosophy Hons. at the University of Delhi.